nvidia 8600 GT w/DDR2 ram versus Quardro FX 570M

The larger issue here is I'm choosing between a Dell Inspiron here and a Thinkpad T series. However, after all the comparisons, including price being equal for similarly equipped models (and a nice corporate discount for the Lenovo, haha) I've realized that I've been leaning towards the Inspiron only because of the reputation of the GeForce 8600.

Today, a trusted friend told me that some Quadro cards are as good, if not better than, GeForce cards. He stressed that this would be true for most applications except very new advanced games. He also said the Quadro card draws less power and therefore promotes longer battery life. From what I've read, the 8600 GT is an industry beast and tough to beat...the one I'd be getting would come with 256 MB DDR2 RAM. Without having the DDR3, my friend said it wouldn't be much better than the Quadro, if at all. The Quadro I can get with 128 MB or 256 MB of RAM (Anyone know if the Quadro has DDR2 or DDR3??)

Can anyone weigh in here? I'm a heavy laptop user, and I travel for my company pretty frequently. I want something I can really beat the heck out of that won't die on me. BUT I also want something that can handle gaming (about twice a week, mostly sports or shooting games). I use a wide variety of applications, as I work in advertising. Anything from InDesign to Office to Photoshop. I'm also really into networking...I have a server at my house and alot of gear, so I do alot of file transfers and remote desktop stuff.

Would anyone venture to say these cards would be close to equal?

 

Which Quadro are you talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVIDIA_Quadro#Mobile_applications

The mobile Quadros are actually based on GeForce cards. The only difference is that their drivers are optimized for running work applications than game applications.

 

I would say the Quadro would be faster, however, like dtwn83 says, hte drivers wouldn't be optimized. Although im sure someone on the internet has modified geforce drivers to work with them.

BTW i am basing my comparison on the fact that a quadro most likely comes with GDDR3 (22.4 gb/s mem bandwidth).

 

the quadro is the same as the 8600gt ddr3 and will out perform the ddr2 you can change the drivers to the 8600 drivers

 

It has 128 MB ram if thats what you're asking. Not sure how many other Quadro FX 570M cards are out there...

Noah: this might be a dumb question, but are you saying driver optimization is necessary to get better performance? You can use the 8600 GT drivers with the Quadro??

How about the 128 MB vs. 256 MB? Basically means the difference between a 14.1 screen and a 15.4. I'd rather have the 14.1 and the smaller overall notebook size that comes with it, but its always nice to have extra video ram. But is it necessary with the applications I posted above? I mean unless I'm running complex 3D games, I'm not sure I "have to have" the extra RAM.

 

yes, you can convert your quadro FX 570m to be essentially the 8600 GT.

However, there's no point of doing it. You'll still be getting the exact performance.

If you did convert it, you would get an 8600m GT DDR3.

Oh, and if you're doing gaming on this, it's better to have 256mb of video RAM. You'll enjoy gaming on the 256mb version compared to the 128mb version.

 

oh yea what howie said.....and the 128mb i believe is worse than the 8600gt ddr2

 

All Geforce 8600 equivalent quadro cards come with GDDR3 memory, if it came to a choice between 1 128MB GDDR3 quadro and the 256 8600GT DDR2 I would pick the quadro if its chip architecture was identical or superior to the 8600GT. Last I checked 128MB GDDR3 RAM gave better performance than 256MB DDR2.

Edit: Quadro FX570m is the 8600 equivalent so I would probably take the quadro with its 128MB GDDR3 video memory.

 

What are you talking about? The 256mb version the Quadro FX 570m is the same thing as the 8600m GT DDR3.

 

Opps, I read the post, started thinking about your Quadro question and forgot about the 570m bit. Anyhow, like what several other people have mentioned, the FX 570m is basically the 8600m with GDDR3, which is better than the Inspiron's DDR2. If you run the Quadro with 8600 drivers, it will perform identically to the GDDR3 version of the 8600.

If the price is the same, I would recommend the T61p, it's definitely better built and tougher than the Inspiron.

 

Tougher than the Inspiron 1520? Look at the Vostro 1500, which comes with similar physical securities as the Lenovo/Thinkpad.

128MB ddr3 better than 256MB ddr2 on a 8600m GT? Do you have any link or comparison.

One a note on ddr2 to ddr3: In these forums there is a thread discussing the real advantage of ddr3 to ddr2 (in the same chip and memory, I think it was the 8600m GT, both with 256MB) is a little more 10%, which translated to FPS will mean that on most games you will have an increase between 3 to 5 FPS.

I don't know the price difference between the two laptops you are looking at, but think if the difference of a laptop with a graphics card ddr2 to one with ddr3 is really worthy.

I hope this can give you a better feeling on the laptops gpu's.

 

Geforce drivers are necessary on Quadro cards if you want to play the latest games like Bioshock and Crysis, which demand up-to-date drivers.

I have 169.04 Forceware on my 570m and it has no problems whatsover.

 

Thanks everyone for the great responses. The video cards were really the decisive factor when narrowing down my laptop search...I've never had anything better than an Intel or entry-level ATI card before, so this will be a great experience for me.

FYI for everyone: I ended up going with the ThinkPad T61p 15.4" screen, T7500 processor, 1 GB ram (will upgrade myself), 160 GB 7200 rpm HD, and Nvidia 256 MB Quadro FX 570M video card. Believe it or not, this was cheaper than the Dell 1520 (similarly equipped), and barely more than a Vostro 1500 similarly equipped after my corporate discount and the nice E-coupon I found on this site. All things equal, including price, no reason not to get the Lenovo is what I figured. Ended up costing little over $1,000 with tax. Today I woke up to an estimated ship date of 12/17 which I'm not happy about but oh well....

sorry for the confusion about the 128 MB vs. 256 MB question. I was mainly wondering what the difference would be on within each product line (ie Quadro 570M 128 MB vs. same card with 256 MB). But someone said there was as much as a 10% difference between DDR2 and GDDR3 ram, so since the 570M has the latter, I figured the 256 MB Quadro FX 570M was the best option.

 

In response to some of the posts, GDDR3 or DDR2, 128mb of video RAM just won't cut it if you want good performance.

 

this may be stupid question, but why won't most mainstream consumer brands allow you to have 256 MB of ram on a nice video card with in a 14 inch screen laptop??

Most of the leading consumer lines all make you get a 15.4" screen or larger before you can upgrade from 128 MB. At least this was true in my online search the last few weeks...

 

Because usually the cards offered for 14'' screen will have its optimal performance with 128MB, where 256MB will mean no real increase (like 8400m GS/GT), instead the Quadro FX 570M or the 8600m GT will have its optimal performance at 256MB.

 

IBM is the one that threw me off....they offer the exact type of card (Quadro FX 570M) in the 14" and 15" versions of the T61p. But you can't upgrade to the 256 MB of RAM if you get the 14" screen. The best you can do is the 128 MB. Doesn't make much sense to me. Its almost like they assume you will want the bigger screen if you care that much about your video card. Is there a resolution issue that makes 256 MB of RAM not ideal for a 14 inch screen??

 

Unless there are some overheating issues, I can't think of any other logical reason for offering only 128MB.